Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood [11]
“No I’m not.”
“Yes you are. They got you. Lie down.”
There is no arguing with him, since he can see the enemy and I can’t. I have to lie down on the swampy ground, propped against a stump to avoid getting too wet, until it’s time for me to be alive again.
Sometimes, instead of war, we hunt through the forest, turning over logs and rocks to see what’s underneath. There are ants, grubs and beetles, frogs and toads, garter snakes, even salamanders if we’re lucky. We don’t do anything with the things we find. We know they will die if we put them into bottles and leave them by accident in the sun in the back window of the car, as we have done before. So we merely look at them, watching the ants hiding their pill-shaped eggs in panic, the snakes pouring themselves into darkness. Then we put the logs back where they were, unless we need some of these things for fishing.
Once in a while we fight. I don’t win these fights: Stephen is bigger and more ruthless than I am, and I want to play with him more than he wants to play with me. We fight in whispers or well out of the way, because if we’re caught we will both be punished. For this reason we don’t tell on each other. We know from experience that the satisfactions of betrayal are scarcely worth it.
Because they’re secret, these fights have an extra attraction. It’s the attraction of dirty words we aren’t supposed to say, words like bum; the attraction of conspiracy, of collusion. We step on each other’s feet, pinch each other’s arms, careful not to give away the pain, loyal even in outrage.
How long did we live this way, like nomads on the far edges of the war?
Today we’ve driven a long time, we’re late setting up our tent. We’re near the road, beside a raggedy anonymous lake. The trees around the shore are doubled in the water, the leaves of the poplars are yellowing towards fall. The sun sets in a long, chilly, lingering sunset, flamingo pink, then salmon, then the improbable vibrant red of Mercurochrome. The pink light rests on the surface, trembling, then fades and is gone. It’s a clear night, moonless, filled with antiseptic stars. There is the Milky Way clear as can be, which predicts bad weather.
We pay no attention to any of this, because Stephen is teaching me to see in the dark, as commandos do. You never know when you might need to do this, he says. You can’t use a flashlight; you have to stay still, in the darkness, waiting until your eyes become accustomed to no light. Then the shapes of things begin to emerge, grayish and glimmering and insubstantial, as if they’re condensing from the air. Stephen tells me to move my feet slowly, balancing on one foot at a time, careful not to step on twigs. He tells me to breathe quietly. “If they hear you they’ll get you,” he whispers.
He crouches beside me, outlined against the lake, a blacker patch of water. I catch the glint of an eye, then he’s gone. This is a trick of his.
I know he’s sneaking up on the fire, on my parents, who are flickering, shadowy, their faces indistinct. I’m alone with my heartbeat and my too-loud breathing. But he’s right: now I can see in the dark.
Such are my pictures of the dead.
5
I have my eighth birthday in a motel. My present is a Brownie box camera, black and oblong, with a handle on top and a round hole at the back to look through.
The first picture taken with it is of me. I’m leaning against the doorframe of the motel cabin. The door behind me is white and closed, with the metal number on it showing: 9. I’m wearing pants, baggy at the knees, and a jacket too short in the sleeves. Under the jacket, I know though you can’t see it, is a hand-me-down brown and yellow striped jersey of my brother’s. Many of my clothes were once his. My skin is ultrawhite from overexposure of the film, my head is tilted to one side, my mittenless wrists dangle. I look like old photos of immigrants. I look as if I’ve been put there in front of the door and told to stand still.
What was I like, what did I want? It’s hard to remember. Did I want a camera for my birthday? Probably not, although